Saturday, June 18, 2016

All you wanted to know about egg freezing

Why should women consider egg-freezing?
Every woman is born with all the eggs she will ever have; when I tell
my patients this in the course of their consultation, many of them are
genuinely shocked. Men are able to produce new and viable sperm right
through their life; by contrast, a woman’s eggs start aging even before
birth, and this process of depletion continues until they are finally
exhausted at menopause.
Today a number of career-minded women put off motherhood and the
fact that they have a depleting egg count can be downright terrifying
to them. But that’s not how it needs to be. Modern day reproductive
technologies have made possible various options that enable women to
have children much later in their life. The key lies in knowing your
options, so you can exercise them intelligently.
Egg freezing is now one of the simplest ways in which a woman can
radically slow-down her biological clock; this option is one I recommend
to young women who are concerned about their fertility.When is the best time for egg-freezing?Its best to freeze your eggs when you are in your
20’s & 30’s. This is because younger eggs are of better quality,
which means they will withstand the freeze and thaw procedure better.
They also have a much better chance of fertilizing, because their
mitochondrial energy levels are higher, which means they provide you a
better chance of having a baby.
The trouble is that when women are good candidates for egg freezing
– between the ages of 30 to 35, they have so much going on in their
life, and rightfully feel that their chances of finding the right person
and getting married are so high , that they still not willing to
consider the possibility that they may have difficulty having a baby in
the bedroom when they want one. The biological clock is still quite
muffled at this stage in a woman’s life ! This is why it’s usually when
they start crossing 37 that they start exploring all these additional
options. They may have heard stories from their friends, who needed to
do IVF to have a baby. This is wake-up call for them, and they are
prodded into exploring their reproductive desires much more closely.
While we are happy to do egg freezing for any woman, no matter what her
age, the reality is that they may not have such a great success rate,
and it would have been much better for them to have done it earlier,
rather than to have postponed making this decision for so long.How is the egg-freezing procedure like?
The egg freezing process isn’t all that complex. Once you qualify as a
candidate for egg freezing, we will then plan a cycle around your
menstrual cycle. As soon as it begins, we begin administering fertility
hormones. These are in the form of daily injections and you are required
to take them for about 10 days , after which your eggs will be
extracted at the clinic. The 30 minute procedure is done under light
sedation, is quick and painless. Your eggs are then frozen by the
embryologist in the IVF lab, using a flash freezing ( vitrification)
protocol. Survival rates are nearly 100%.Will freezing my eggs now make me run out of them later?
This is a misconception, and a very common one at that. This is
because we are only freezing the eggs which you would otherwise have
lost. Typically, only one egg gets ovulated each month, but 30-40
follicles start the maturation process. These normally die every month,
because they undergo atresia. With the fertility hormone treatment, we
are effectively disrupting this loss , which means we are saving those
eggs which would have died under natural circumstances. You also need
to keep in mind that the hormonal injections we use are natural
hormones, which get excreted promptly, and don’t have any long-term side
effects.What are the success rates of having a healthy baby through frozen eggs?
The success rates of having a healthy baby depend upon many
variables, including: the number of eggs frozen ; the quality of the
eggs; and the experience and expertise of the IVF clinic doing the egg
freezing.
The younger the age at which your eggs are frozen, the better your chances of having a healthy baby with them
While it’s hard to provide precise success rates for an individual
woman, the rule of thumb is that a woman less than 35 should freeze
approximately 20 frozen eggs to have a chance of about 80% of having a
healthy baby. While the survival rate of frozen eggs after thawing is
excellent, we need to remember that human reproduction is not an
efficient enterprise – and this is true both in the bedroom and in the
IVF lab . Thus, about 60% of these eggs will fertilise after thawing
when ICSI is done; and about 40% will form Day 5 embryos ( blastocysts).
When a blastocyst is transferred, it has about a 30% chance of
implanting and becoming a baby. Since each frozen egg is worth its
weight in gold, it’s a good idea to freeze extra eggs, to make sure your
safety net is robust – and in case your want more babies in the future !
This means you may need to do 1-3 egg freezing cycles, to give
yourself a good chance of having a baby. This will depend upon your
ovarian reserve, and whether you have conditions such as PCOD or
endometriosis. The rule is simple – more is better !How long will my frozen eggs last?
Theoretically, forever! The eggs are frozen at -196, which means they
are in a state of suspended animation, and will remain here until we
thaw them, because all their metabolic activity has been stopped at this
low temperature. The technology has been used for over a decade now and
there are healthy children from eggs which have been frozen for 5-9
years.Are babies that have been created using frozen eggs as healthy as all other babies?
Regardless of whether IVF babies have been created using fresh or frozen
eggs ( or frozen sperm or embryos for that matter) , they are as
healthy as any babies that have been born naturally.What are the complications?
It’s very important that you take all these medications the way they
have been prescribed by your doctor. You may also be asked to avoid
sexual intercourse for a certain period of time. The symptoms you
should be wary about are:
• Temperature above 39°C
• Severe abdominal pain/swelling
• Severe nausea/vomiting which doesn’t go away
• Heavy vaginal bleeding (though light -bleeding is normal)
• Difficulty urinating/painful urination
• Fainting/dizzinessAny final words of advice for the readers of EggChill?
It’s great that advances in reproductive technology now offer so
many additional options to women, so that they can now control their own
reproductive destinies, rather than depend upon the vagaries of nature.
Biology is not destiny, and we need to make sure women are made aware
of their options, so they can make well-informed choices for themselves